"Outside of Pankaj (Chaddah) and I, Gunjan Patidar (CTO) was the first person to come work full time on Zomato. We were referred to Gunjan by an intern who knew him through college. When he came in to meet us, he was wearing a T-shirt that said 'will code for food'. We knew we had the right guy.

I guess back then we were looking for someone who was passionate about tech and wanted to write good code. We reached out to our old teammates, classmates, friends and alumni networks. We were very fortunate to get the right set of people on board in the early days. We grew the team very slowly up until 2011, which is when we started picking a slight pace in hiring and for the last two years have been consistently doubling in size. There are over 3000 of us across 22 countries and it feels like such a short time ago when we were in just eight cities in India.

When we started out our first mission was to build the most exhaustive database of restaurants in the Delhi/ NCR region. I think in the early days raising funds was one of the bigger challenges and as we grow and scale up, attracting and retaining the right people is an ongoing challenge. We have, however, been very lucky to have the right kind of investors on board. We have also built a fantastic team of over 3000 people across 22 countries and are really looking forward to what the rest of the year has in store for us.

Every country has its own culture and it is difficult to replicate similar cultures across several countries. However, we have realised that if we look hard and invest enough time to find folks who are passionate about the product, we will find them. It does take time but we always find the right fit for the organisation. If you walk into any of the Zomato offices across 22 countries, you will find a similar passion and vibe in the office.

Till about a year ago, I was fairly hands-on in the hiring process. Over the last 9 - 12 months we have built a healthy layer of business owners and recruiters who are just as passionate about Zomato and are helping Zomato grow at a much faster pace."